


Rage against the dying of the light

by WillJ



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 14:27:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6332677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WillJ/pseuds/WillJ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce has definite views of motherhood...Frigga corrects him</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rage against the dying of the light

Unable to sleep, Bruce strolled into his lab early in the morning with a cup of tea. 

And feeling vibrations from the soles of his feet, his lips quirked upwards, giving his usually sober mien a puckish cast. 

Tony was still at it in the lab below. 

Bruce’s face slowly sobered. Tony couldn’t sleep either…which meant bad dreams for his friend and genius inventor. Setting his tea aside, he sighed and resolved to talk to Pepper, who would also rope in Rhodey to try to convince Tony to talk to Sam Wilson, their unofficial official therapist.

Abruptly he started, whirling about with green tinged eyes.

“Peace, child,” Frigga drawled amusedly, waving a hand almost absently. She rose gracefully from the comfortable chair...a piece of furniture that had not existed in the lab before. 

Bruce was startled to feel a confused, frustration coming from the Other Guy. To him, however, it felt like he had lit a stick of dynamite only to find himself with a dud.

“What did you do?” he barked out, to shaken to remember the woman was a queen. 

Frigga smiled serenely at the mortal, her blue eyes holding an eerie, luminescent sheen that one sometimes caught in Thor’s eyes. 

“I wished to speak with you, without the ears of my children,” she explained simply. She began to glide elegantly, trailing a hand on the counters, touching things here and there with careful, precise fingers. 

Bruce warily kept an eye on the queen, struggling to master his own very human anger at his interloper. Queen be damned. To calm himself down, he busied himself putting on gloves and a lab coat, his metaphysical armor.

The queen had arrived several days ago to much fanfare, to visit with her ‘boys’ both now helping the Avengers, though Loki did so with the utmost reluctance. 

Watching Loki and the queen’s interaction, it was clear the younger prince painfully adored his mother. They had listened to many of Thor’s stories about Asgard, and for the most part were a little appalled. They didn’t think Thor was aware of just how revealing his stories about his childhood were to the humans.

And while there was quite a lot of anger still towards Loki, there was an understanding of how Loki ended up being the ‘twisted, fucked up little shit’ he was, according to Tony who saw a scarily similarity between himself and Loki. 

He hadn’t had centuries to endure one emotionally withdrawn parent figure, another enabling parent figure and an almost narcissistic so-called brother that professed love while at the same time joining in the cycle of bullying.

Hence the increasingly sleepless nights because Tony wondered aloud to Bruce what if he hadn’t had a Rhodey, or a Jarvis (the human Jarvis) or Pepper to keep him grounded? That protected him from himself?

Even Clint had found himself troubled by his conflicting feelings for their indentured ally. His conflict was expressed in the increasingly high, precarious perches he sought.

Bruce lost himself in his work, struggling to resolve his inner conflict. Which made for very unsettling living arrangements, he knew. But Tony would not hear of his leaving.

And Thor and Loki both looked upon the struggling Avengers with various confused expressions. 

The three men, however, had almost dealt with their problem when the queen arrived…and seeing the light in Loki’s sullen, green eyes made Bruce almost want to hurl. 

So he made his excuses and left, feeling his tenuous control over the Other Guy fracturing. He could barely stand to be in the same building with her, much less the room, without wanting to punch her. The very violence of his thoughts warned him to stay as far away from the queen as possible.

Yet, now she was here. 

Here in one of his places of refuges.

And she did something that prevented the Other Guy from making an appearance.

Frigga laughed softly at the frown pulling at the mortal’s face. “You wonder why your other half has not appeared, yes? I wished to speak with you, not fight with him,” she shrugged, delicately trailing long fingers over a slim, glass vial. She glanced around the room, almost wistfully. “My Loki has…” she corrected herself, “Had a room much like this where he enjoyed making potions.” She laughed gently. “Many times, his poor brother was the unknowing recipient of such potions.” Frigga threw a laughing glance at the mortal. “Mealtimes were often fraught with much yelling and shouting.”

Bruce ignored the queen’s opening gambit. He hid behind a polite, calm façade. “You said you wanted to speak to me?” He began gathering the necessary reagents for the formula he was experimenting on.

The laughter faded somewhat from Frigga’s eyes, leaving them cool and watchful, though her lips still smiled. “You do not like me.”

A dark brow shot up, nimble fingers hesitated at the queen’s bluntness before resuming pouring a small measure of liquid in the beaker. “I don’t know you, your highness.” He couldn’t resist adding, “I only know what your son and his friends have told us about Asgard.”

The queen’s lips twisted in a rueful smile. “Ah, yes, my darling son, Sif and the Warriors Three,” she murmured softly. “Never have there been five such idiots in the realm of Asgard.”

At that shocking admission, Bruce fumbled the liquid, nearly spilling it on the counter. He gaped at her. Frigga looked vastly amused. “I’ve shocked you haven’t I?”

“Yeah,” he admitted, forgetting the honorifics. Then his face hardened, nearly visible walls went up. Frigga sighed almost impatiently. 

Mortals, so very sensitive.

“But I sense there’s more to your dislike,” she guessed shrewdly, showing a dangerous intuitiveness that helped her survive a millennia as Asgard’s queen.

Bruce seemed to ignore her, focusing his attention single-minded on what he was doing. Pulling on protective gloves, he grabbed a pair of tongs and carefully poured acid into another vial. 

The woman waited patiently as was her nature. She was capable of waiting a thousand years, if needed, for certain events to shape out.

“My father was an abusive asshole,” Bruce spoke almost absently, his dark eyes intent on his work. “He seemed to take a sick pleasure out of screaming at me and my mother, calling us worthless, good-for nothing pieces of shit, and that he wished we were both dead. He liked to catch me alone, make me cry. My mom, tried as best she could to protect me.” He glanced up at the queen’s blank face then back to his hands. “He also liked to hit me, but most of the times, my mother would yell for me to run and hide…and she would take the beating for me.” 

Bruce hands slowed, his eyes holding a faraway look. A tender smile tugged at his mouth. The queen watched him, fascinated at the change in the mortal’s expression. “As often as she could, she would protect me from his rages, silent defiance which he couldn’t stand. Long after the door would slam shut, I would creep from my hiding place and tend to her, helping her off the floor, washing the blood from her face.” He glanced again at the queen, his gentle face hardening to a cold mask. 

“And one day, he caught me alone and started being me, she came in and jumped in front of me. He knocked her aside, she fell and hit her head on the corner table. She died protecting me.” His eyes were hard and cold. “And I wasn’t even her child, just some bastard child her husband had got on some other woman.”

“Ah…” the queen nodded to herself, beginning to see. “Your mother was a very courageous woman, kind as well.” She resumed her idle wandering of the lab. “You have a very definite view of what a mother is, what she does.”

He shrugged with seemingly carelessness, though his eyes were dark and watchful. “A mother protects and cares for her children, puts them first or what kind of a mother is she?”

“Yes, what kind of mother allows her husband to berate her son, emotionally cripple him, make him unstable, envious, allows others to treat him badly?” The queen tone was vague, almost indifferent. She looked considering at the gas pipes on the table then nodded and continued her slow walk. “Did you know my other title is the ‘All-Mother’?”

Bruce blinked at the apparent non sequitur, wondering what that had to do with anything. “No,” he replied, his voice curt. 

“Asgard is one of the oldest realms. I, myself, am a little over thirty millennium and became All-Mother when I was a little over five thousand years old. My hand has been in the shaping of various realms and people, guarding and guiding them. Thus my title of All-Mother refers the fact that ‘my ‘children’ are spread throughout the Nine Realms,” she replied almost absently. 

She gazed, fascinatedly at the coiling of glass tubes. Mutely she shook her head in wonder at mortal ingenuity. “Tell me, child, what would your mother do if she knew the key to your survival, not just your survival but billions upon billions of other lives, depended on your father beating you nearly to death every week? If your father knew—though it killed his soul—that he HAD to do this to you? Do such despicable things to a child that is their entire world? That a child you a you had to endure years to torment, abuse and mental cruelty to come out on the other side, stronger, harder, able to endure even more torment…to save the lives several million species? Knowing that only he is strong enough to save everyone in the known realms? “

It took a moment to see the queen’s seemingly idle wanderings had a purpose…it put her in front of Bruce. 

Who unknowingly made the mistake of staring at the queen, hiding how unnerved she was making him. 

Staring into her eyes, he was startled as her pupils abruptly expanded changing her blue eyes to a solid, matte black. Then it was like a veil was pulled from between them, and screaming silently he had the sensation of falling…falling into a starry black expanse. 

As he tumbled through space, whenever his eye landed on a planet, it was like he was there in the streets, in their houses, watching what were clearly people—brown, pink, black, orange, feathers, reptilian—laughing, loving and simply living their lives. 

And far in the distance, he saw a darkness creeping over the stars, snuffing them out, spreading chaos and misery to every world it touched. 

Bruce clapped his hands futilely over his ears, trying to muffle the screams and wails of the dying. 

Frigga blinked, releasing Bruce from her gaze. He dropped to his knees, unaware that he was crying. He shook, shivering with the cold of terror. 

His last image was of a shadowy being turning towards him…and he desperately didn’t want it to see him.

The queen looked calmly down at the mortal. 

Cool fingers stroked gently over the back of Bruce’s neck, drawing a veil between him and the vision. “What…” Bruce began hoarsely, shaking and shuddering, “What was that?”

“Death…”

“Now tell me child, would you mother damn thousands of worlds –billions of souls--to an purposeless death just to succor you or would she endeavor to make you strong, strong enough to withstand, fight to survive on the slim chance that you and your allies could defeat the coming darkness? Should one life be more valuable than untold billions?” 

Head cocked to the side, Frigga studied the mortal’s shaken expression. “Yes, I rather thought so too.”

Frigga strolled away, golden skirt swaying elegantly, lightly behind her. She paused with her hand on the door before saying over her shoulder, “There was a line in one of your poems, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light’.” 

There was quiet, aching regret in her voice. “I will to do more than simply rage…my children will live.”

The door closed with a quiet ‘snick’ leaving Bruce on his knees in the still, silent room.

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure I should or would continue....let me know.


End file.
